Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

AFTER THE livestock it had been the suppurated tooth of an elderly woman, and then setting the broken forearm of a fisherman injured during the storm. Svenson knew these errands established goodwill to compensate for the strangeness of their arrival, and also for the haunting figure of Cardinal Chang, whose company—the villagers made quite clear—was unanimously loathed. But the Doctor was left with little time for Elöise, and when he was free—brief moments in the kitchen or on the porch, perfectly willing for another walk to the shore—she became unaccountably busy herself.

At their evening meal, however, they must finally be together. Lina preferred the three of them to eat apart from the family, the better to isolate the cost of their board. Svenson was more than happy to oblige. He stood over the stove, watching the kettle, having offered to make tea. Chang pushed open the door, his arms full of split wood, which he carefully stacked next to the stove. The kettle began spitting steam and Svenson lifted it up, his hand wrapped in a rag, poured it into the open pot, and placed it on a cooler part of the stove. Elöise entered from Miss Temple's room. She caught his eye and smiled quickly, then gathered an armful of dishes to set the table. Svenson replaced the top on the teapot and stepped away, rubbing his temples with a sudden grimace. Chang smirked and sat, allowing Elöise to weave around him.

“You have my sympathies, Doctor,” Chang said.

“Sympathies for what?” asked Elöise, setting out three metal mugs for tea.

“His headache, of course.” Chang smiled. “The cruelties of tobacco deprivation…”

“O that,” replied Elöise. “Hardly the best of habits.”

“Tobacco quite sharpens the mind,” observed the Doctor mildly.

“And yellows the teeth,” replied Elöise, equally genial.

Lina came between them with a steaming pot of soup—her usual steep of potatoes, fish, cream, and pickled onion. Chang had announced he could not taste it at all, by way of explaining his regular second helpings. At least the bread was fresh. Svenson wondered if Elöise ever baked bread. His cousin Corinna had. Not that she had needed to, there had always been servants—but Corinna had enjoyed the work, laughing that a country woman ought to do things with her hands. Corinna… killed by blood fever while Svenson had been at sea. He tried to remember what sorts of bread she had made—all he recalled was the flour on her hands and forearms, and her satisfied smile.

“Sorge can get tobacco,” said Lina, speaking to no one in particular.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Svenson, far too eagerly.

“Fishermen chew it. But smoke also. Talk to Sorge.”

She ran her eyes across the table to see if her obligations for their meal were met. A sharp nod to Elöise—they were—and Lina excused herself into the inner room. As soon as the door closed, Svenson held a chair for Elöise and pushed it in after she had settled herself. He took his own seat, then snapped up again to pour the tea.

“It seems you are saved,” said Elöise, tartly.

“By the saint of foul habits, I am sure.”

They did not speak while the soup was served and the bread passed, each tearing off a piece with their hands.

“How is Miss Temple?” asked Chang.

“Unchanged.”

Svenson dunked his bread in the broth, biting off the whole of the dampened portion.

“She dreams,” said Elöise.

Chang looked up.

“She is delirious,” said Svenson, chewing. Elöise shook her head.

“I am not so sure. We spoke very little together, at Harschmort— I do not presume to know her—yet I do know she holds her life quite tightly, with such purpose , for someone so young…”

She looked up to find both men watching her closely.

“I do not criticize,” said Elöise. “Did either of you know she looked into a book? A glass book?”

“Not at all,” answered Svenson. “Are you sure?”

“She said nothing,” muttered Chang.

“But when would she have?” admitted Svenson. “What did she say about it?”

“Nothing at all, apart that she had done it—if I remember correctly she mentioned the fact to comfort me. But the book I looked into was empty—that book looked into me , if that does not sound mad.”

“I saw the same at Harschmort,” said Chang. “You are fortunate to retain your mind, Mrs. DuJong.”

“It quite nearly killed her,” said Svenson, a touch importantly.

“The point is that my glass book was empty,” said Elöise, “its intent being to take my memories. But Miss Temple looked into a book that was full.”

Doctor Svenson set down his spoon.

“My Lord. A full book … instead of the few incidents captured in a single glass card. One could experience entire lifetimes —and dear heaven, you would remember those experiences from other lives as things you yourself had done. An entire book… and depending on the memories it contained… and given the decadent tastes of the Comte…” The Doctor paused.

“So I suppose I merely wonder what she dreams,” said Elöise quietly.

Svenson looked across the table at Chang, who was silent. He glanced at Elöise. Her hand shook as she held her mug. She saw his gaze and set it down with another brisk smile.

“I find I cannot sleep,” she said. “Perhaps it is the excess of light this far north.”

A SINGLE CANDLE burned in a dish near the bed in Miss Temple's room. Svenson sat down on the bed next to her, holding the light close to see her clearly. He took her pulse at the throat, feeling the heat of her glistening skin. Her heart was restless and fast. Was there so little else to do? He rose, opened the door, and nearly collided with Elöise, her hands occupied with a basin of water, new towels draped over each arm.

“I thought you'd gone with Sorge,” she said.

“Not at all. I set more herbs to steep, which should be ready. A moment.”

When he returned with the re-charged teapot, he found Elöise on the opposite side of the bed, bathing Miss Temple's body, one limb at a time. The Doctor swirled the tea before pouring it into Miss Temple's small china mug to cool, his eyes caught by the sensual competency of Elöise's fingers. Elöise carefully bent one leg at the knee and sponged along underneath, the beads of water running down the girl's pale thigh into the shadows at her hips. Elöise resoaked the cloth and reached carefully under the shift to wash—Svenson made a point of looking away—between Miss Temple's legs, the movements of her hand a gentle burrowing beneath the fabric. Elöise removed the cloth, dipped it back in the basin, and squeezed it out.

“That will ease her sleep a bit, surely,” she said softly. She handed the cloth to Svenson and nodded to the limb nearest to him. “Will you do that arm?”

He ran the cloth along Miss Temple's pale, thin arm, the cool water trickling to the stubbled pale pit and under the shift to her ribs.

“We were speaking of memory,” he said.

“We were.”

“A curious … phenomenon .”

Elöise did not answer, but instead reached out to glide a strand of hair from Miss Temple's face with an extended finger.

“My own circumstance, for example,” the Doctor continued. “In the course of these past weeks I have squandered all hope of returning as anything but a traitor to my home, my own duty invisible next to a murdered Prince, a slaughtered Envoy, a diplomatic mission in ruins.”

“Doctor…Abelard—”

“Your turn.” He handed the cloth to her and nodded at the other arm. “I am not finished. The point being that while I am presently banished—my mind spinning to imagine a life in exile—what work, what hope, what love…” He did not meet her eyes. “I am made aware by this crisis that the only force binding me to Macklenburg, indeed that has bound me to the world these past six years, is memory. A woman I loved. She died. All has been futility—and yet, that loss, which is also her, seems to be all I know. How can I go forward and not betray what I have been? A fool's dilemma—life being life, corpses being many—and yet, such is my mind.”